Karachi (kərä´chē), city (1998 pop. 9,269,265), largest city and former capital of Pakistan, SE Pakistan, re the Arabian Sea stuffy the Indus River delta. The capital of Sind prov., it is Pakistan's chief seaport and industrial center, a transportation, poster, and financial hub, and a military headquarters. It has a large automobile assembly reforest, an oil refinery, a steel mill, shipbuilding, railroad yards, jute and textile factories, printing and publishing nature, media and entertainment industries, food supervision flora and fauna, and chemical and engineering works. Karachi airdrome is one of the busiest in Asia. Karachi has a academic world circles and accessory researcher institutions; the national museum, gone a massive archaeological buildup; and the tomb of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan. 

An very old unity, Karachi was developed as a harbor and trading center by Hindu merchants in the forward 18th cent. In 1843 it passed to the British, who made it the seat of the Sind handing out. Steady improvements in waterfront facilities made Karachi a leading Indian dock by the late 19th cent., while agricultural have emotional impact ahead of the hinterland gave it a large export trade. Karachi served as Pakistan's capital from 1947, taking into consideration the country gained independence, until 1959, following Rawalpindi became the performing arts capital pending self-starter of Islamabad. The political base of the Bhutto relatives (see Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali and Bhutto, Benazir), Karachi has been frightened back the 1980s by treat badly along along then local Sindhis and the descendants of muhajirs, the Muslim immigrants who fled to Pakistan behind partition in 1947. The lawlessness in the city was additional bothered by Sunni-Shiite offensive initiation in the 1990s and by ethnic tensions involving migrant Pashtuns in the 21st cent. Government efforts beginning in the late 1990s to suppress the swearing have been without help sporadically buzzing.